Counting down to the start of classes this fall? Time is running out to get through the back-to-school checklist: confirming class schedule, getting new gear to decorate your dorm room, checking out school activities, and of course, buying textbooks. We can’t help with everything on your list, but we can lighten your load, literally.

Starting now, students in Canada can rent or purchase digital textbooks from play.google.com/textbooks. With thousands of textbooks from top publishers, we have a comprehensive selection of higher education titles from science and mathematics to history and English, and everything in between.

With Google Play Books, your textbook library is stored in the cloud and synced to your devices, giving you instant access to the titles you need, when you need them, on your Android tablet, phone, iOS device, or on the web. An overstuffed backpack is a thing of the past.

With the Google Play Books app, you have convenient tools at hand to make studying simpler and faster. You can instantly search within a textbook for a particular word or phrase, bookmark chapters and pages, highlight and annotate key passages and get quick access to dictionaries, translation tools, Wikipedia and Google search.

If you only need your textbooks for a semester or two, you can choose to rent any textbook on Google Play for six months and save up to 80% as compared to buying print textbooks.

Shop for textbooks today on Google Play, and learn more at our Google in Education site.

When we introduced Classroom back in May, we asked educators to give it a try. The response was exciting — more than 100,000 educators from more than 45 countries signed up to try it. Today, we’re starting to open Classroom to all Google Apps for Education users, helping teachers spend more time teaching and less time shuffling papers.

The teachers of Ontario’s Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board were some of the first to use Classroom. Since May, Google Certified Teacher and WECDSB’s e-Learning expert Joe Sisco has used Classroom in professional development sessions with the Board’s educators. Joe says that teachers have found it incredibly easy to use: “It took about 5 minutes or less to create a class, have 30 teachers join the class, and push out a Google Drawing to have them sort images using a venn diagram.”

Teachers and students have been instrumental in helping us build Classroom. For example, we heard during the preview that educators don’t want to wait until an assignment is turned in to collaborate with students. Now with Classroom, teachers will be able to view and comment on students’ work to help them along the way. We’ve also heard that educators want a simple place to post information and materials about their classes, so we added an “About” page for each course as well.

Teachers can review assignments directly from Classroom and provide feedback and grades to students all in one place.

Starting today, Classroom is available in 42 languages (including Hebrew, Arabic and Persian). It also works well on mobile devices and most popular screen readers. We’ll be rolling out to more users every day, so if you go to classroom.google.com with your Apps for Education account and don’t have access yet, please check back soon!

Hopefully Classroom will help you spend a little less time at the photocopier and a little more time doing what you love—teaching.

Whether you’re a university applicant or a curious parent getting to know your kid’s new home away from home, Street View can take you on a walking tour of schools around the world. Starting today, you’ll be able to explore 36 new university campuses across the U.S. and Canada with Street View in Google Maps.

With a click of your mouse, you can visit the University of Calgary, one of Canada's top research universities and alma mater of our 22nd Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Our very own, Engineering Director, Stephen Woods completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

Continuing along, visit University of Manitoba, Western Canada's first university, and home of the U of M Bison.

These Canadian universities in the prairies are some of the latest additions to the hundreds of college and university campuses all over the world that are already available for you to explore in Google Maps. To see if a Street View tour of your dream school is available, search for a particular university on Google Maps and click on Pegman to enter the Street View imagery. Visit our Street View gallery for global highlights and other popular universities around the world.

So if you can’t make it in person, Street View can help you get a feel for the place you’re considering spending the next four years. And for you parents out there, this might help you get used to the idea of an empty nest!

Earlier this year we asked students around the world how they would change the world as part of the 4th annual Google Science Fair. Students from all over the world, including Canada, submitted incredibly creative and clever ideas tackling some of today’s biggest problems.

Next month, Hayley will be California-bound to compete at Google HQ for the Age Category Awards (ages 17-18 category) and of course, the overall Google Science Fair Grand Prize Award. The competition will end in style with an awards ceremony, which will be live streamed on the Science Fair YouTube channel and on the Google Science Fair website. Tune in to find out this year’s winners!

But first, Canada we need your help - pick your favorite project for the 2014 Voter’s Choice Award. Show your support for the finalists and cast a vote on the Google Science Fair website beginning September 1. Every year, we are blown away by the projects and ideas our young people come up with, and you will be too.

What’s next for our young Canadian scientist? Hayley plans to attend the University of Alberta, in the fall to complete a Bachelor of Science Honours degree in Microbiology. “My future academic goals also involve the PhD degree program after working alongside PhD students in labs during my projects.” says Hayley Todesco, “I would love a scientific research career in the field of biotechnology, specifically relating to environmental issues. After all, I couldn't imagine pursuing a better path than one that constantly fascinates me.”